funny how I can always get the conversational drop on the people in my head

[malka]

This conversation happened in my head this weekend. I love it, but I have no direct use for it. Free to a good home.

Protagonist (as part of an ongoing conversation): I feel hurt and upset by [topic of conversation].
Annoying person: Citation needed.
Protagonist, promptly: Personal conversation with [Protagonist], July 15th 2012.

Comments

[cme]

Sometimes you do it in real life, too! It counts even when not premeditated.

[malka]

:)

True, but the other people in my head are much more... scripted to make me be the main character, I guess. It's sort of a weird relative to the Bechdel test: the straw-people in my head talk only to me and only about things I want to talk about, while the people in the real world sometimes talk to each other about things that don't interest me.

(When I was a kid I read a book called Behind the Attic Wall, where a lonely kid who felt looked-down-on and ignorant created imaginary friends who were more ignorant than her. Then she went around and showed them ordinary things in a very deftly done cross between explaining the world to herself and getting to be the condescender instead of the condescendee. My internal voices are more aligned towards always having the conversations I want to have and being appropriately stymied by the things I think should stymie them, but there are similarities.)

[cme]

Damn, your head-people are way more cooperative than mine!

Or is there a separate category for the voices that say mean, doubting things?

[malka]

Those seem to be completely separate in my head. I think of them as demons sometimes.

Or maybe it's just that there's one category of slightly-different-from-the-self internal thought-about-a-thing-that's-bothering-me generator, and I label it a demon or a straw person after the fact depending on how the interaction goes. There's a lot of observer bias here.

Hmm. I wonder if it means anything that the straw people have voices (of a yes-man sort) and the demons are mostly interacting in thoughts.

Minds are weird.